Richard Garner woke to his alarm at five in the morning. He exercised for thirty minutes. He showered, dressed in khakis and a gray cotton tennis shirt, and went to his den. Beyond the windows Central Park lay in amber light and long, early shadows, thirty stories below.
He switched on the computer. While the operating system loaded, he left the room and crossed the broad stone hallway to the kitchen. He toasted two slices of wheat bread and poured a glass of orange juice. He took the plate and glass back to the den, sat at the computer, and clicked open his work in progress. The book was still only an outline. It'd begun as a study of Ulysses S. Grant's time in office, with a focus on the difference between overseeing a war and overseeing a nation, but the research had led elsewhere. Now the book was shaping up into a broader examination of every president who'd held a position of military authority before taking office. An analysis of the pros and cons regarding what that kind of experience brought to a president's perspective. He wasn't sure yet on which side he would ultimately come down-whether generals tended to make good presidents or not. The evidence pointed to a number of conclusions, each conditional to time and place and political climate, and he'd only just begun digging through it. He hoped his own military background-he hadn't made general, but he'd commanded a SEAL team for the bulk of the seventies-would provide him more insight than bias.
It was involving work.
Which he needed right now.
Would almost certainly need for the rest of his life.
He stayed in the den all morning and into the early afternoon. Mostly he sat at the computer, but at times he paced before the windows, looking out over the park and the city.
He took a break at one o'clock. He had a sandwich and a 7UP. He plugged his iPod into the sound system, piped the music through the residence and did some random work around the place. Though he'd been here for two years, some part of him still felt like he hadn't settled in yet. Like he was still getting used to it. Still getting used to living anywhere on his own.
The residence took up an entire floor of the building, though only two thirds of it made up his own living space. The other third comprised the living and working quarters of the Secret Service detail that guarded him. He played poker with them, most nights.
He quit the chores at four o'clock. Turned off the music. Went back to the den. He opened a heavy box of yellowed, sleeve-protected documents that'd come from the archives of the New York Public Library. The pages were by no means a part of the library's lending collection. Even as non-circulating reference material they were pretty hard to gain access to. Garner felt a bit of guilt over the privilege his resume afforded him, but not enough to lose sleep over. It was just much easier for the library to send the stuff to him than to have him and his security footprint dropping in every time he needed to verify a quote. Besides, he was an old friend of the place. He'd worked there in his college years. He'd probably walked past this very box a hundred times.
The day was clear and bright, but by five o'clock the sunlight in the room had diminished a bit. He turned on the lamp beside his reading chair. George Washington's handwriting was hard enough to make out as it was.
At a quarter past five a cool breeze filtered into the room from the hallway. It stirred the papers on the table beside him. It took him two or three seconds to realize that a breeze should be impossible. None of the residence's windows were open.
For a moment he only stared at the doorway. Tried to make sense of it. There was an intake for the HVAC system just out in the hall. No reason air should be coming out of it, but maybe some kind of maintenance was going on. It was all he could think of.
All he could think of that was benign, anyway. In recent years he'd grown used to considering more threatening scenarios for given situations.
He set aside the page he was reading. He stood, curious but not afraid. He could clap his hands and have six agents with submachine guns coming in through separate access points in quite a bit less than ten seconds. They didn't normally monitor video feeds of the residence, but any sharp sound above 85 decibels would trip the acoustic alarm and bring them running.
He crossed the room and stepped into the hallway. The main entry was still closed and locked. The kitchen was empty. He turned toward the living room-and flinched.
People.
Three of them.
Right there.
Garner was an instant from shouting to trigger the alarm when he realized he recognized one of them. Paige Campbell.
Tangent.
He felt his fear turn to anger. He advanced on her and the others. It occurred to him only in passing to wonder why all three of them had damp hair and clothing.
"We're sorry to intrude-" Paige said.
Garner cut her off. "Leave. Right now. However the hell you came-"
Paige stepped aside, and in the gap between her and the other two, Garner saw where the wind was coming from.
He stopped. His anger faded. He didn't know what to feel, suddenly. All he could do was stare. T ravis watched Garner's reaction. The initial anger made sense. The man's wife had died because of her work with Tangent; he couldn't have been ecstatic to see them here.
Now as Garner stared at the iris, Travis stepped aside, along with Bethany, to give him an unbroken view.
Garner moved toward it. Started to say something. Stopped.
Then it contracted shut in front of him, and he blinked, confused.
"Sorry," Bethany said. "Hang on."
She was holding the cylinder. She looked around for a place to set it. Pointed to a narrow table along the nearest wall, and looked at Garner.
"Is this okay?"
The guy could barely process what the hell she was asking him. He stared at her for a second and then his eyes went back to the spot where the iris had vanished.
Bethany took his silence for a yes. She set the cylinder on the table and found a heavy bookend to brace it with.
Travis glanced at the floor-to-ceiling windows on the south wall, facing down Central Park West toward Midtown. The park itself filled the left half of the view. The right half was full of the varied architecture of the Upper West Side. Travis guessed the buildings ranged in age from a few years to well over a hundred. The day was beautiful, with huge, slow clouds dragging their shadows across the sweep of the city.
Then Bethany switched on the cylinder and the iris appeared again, and Travis saw the other Manhattan. The one they'd been looking at for the past several minutes as they ascended the ruins of Garner's building.
That version of the borough was in the same condition as D.C. for the most part. The entire island was carpeted with dense boreal forest, from which rose the corroded remains of the city skyline.
What set it apart from D.C.-more so than Travis had imagined until he'd seen it for himself-was simply the scale of the ruins. In D.C. the sixteen-story office building had looked enormous. It would've been lost among the ankles of the giants that stood rusting here. The remnants of skyscrapers below Central Park formed a solid visual screen standing eight hundred feet high-higher still in some places. The October wind sighed through it, finding odd angles and rivet holes whichever way it blew. It sounded like a chorus of a million reed flutes, playing soft and low in the dead framework of the city.
All of it lay cold and misty under bruised knots of cloud cover. Each time the wind gusted through the iris it blew a wisp of moisture into the room.
Garner remained where he'd been standing.
"It won't shut again," Bethany said. "You can go close to it. You can lean right through."
He looked at her. Looked at each of them in turn. He managed a nod, and crossed the room to the iris. He stared through. For more than three minutes he said nothing. Then he closed his eyes. He shook his head and lowered it.
"Tell me everything," he said.